


Rewrite the Stars

by BraimeXGwendolaj



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), Game of Thrones RPF
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M, Gwennik, RPF, gwendolaj - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22668457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BraimeXGwendolaj/pseuds/BraimeXGwendolaj
Summary: “Now for some news in the entertainment field; TMZ has released photos of Game of Thrones stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Gwendoline Christie sharing a passionate moment after the SAGs.  A source familiar with the on and off screen lovers said the two have been involved with one another for quite some time, and quote, ‘did things together that would have made Cersei Lannister herself, blush’.”XXXGwen and Nik’s hidden romance finally comes to light.  Will the two stars be able to salvage their relationship amongst the carnage caused by the leaked photos, or will their relationship end as tragically as their onscreen coupling did?
Relationships: Gwendoline Christie/Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 46
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an RPF. Turn back now if that’s not your thing.

“You promised!”

“Calm down.”

“You  _ promised  _ things were going to be fine! You  _ promised  _ that we were alone! That no paparazzi would be at the motel, they’d all be camped out in front of the parties! You  _ promised,  _ Nik!”

“Gwen, please calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to be calm! Do NOT tell me to  _ calm! Down! _ ”

Nik bit his lip as he watched the tall blonde pace back and fourth, back and forth in the hotel room, her pale face even whiter than usual and her brilliantly blue eyes alight with waves of panic and terror. “It… it won’t be as bad as you think,” he told her, wishing she would just stop to look at him. “Not for you, you aren’t married.”

“Yes because the women in these situations are never demonized by the press and the public.”

“I’ll defend you,” he promised. And he would. Every day, for the rest of his life if that’s what it took. That was all he wanted to do since he had met this tall statuesque woman in the makeup trailer a lifetime ago. There hadn’t been a chemistry test, not like the one he had to do with Lena or the one Emilia had to do with Jason. They cast Gwen not knowing rather or not she and the actor playing her eventual love interest would even click. 

But they had. The casting directors, Dan, David, even George RR Martin himself said the chemistry they had was ‘lighting in a bottle.’ The agnostic back and forth, the sexually charged push and pull, the love to hate relationship they had was exactly what they wanted for their characters. 

Eventually though, perhaps inevitably, the love to hate simply turned into love...

“I’ll go on twitter, Instagram, I’ll do whatever you need me to do to make this better,” Nik told her.

She scoffed, still pacing, still refusing to look at him. “You wouldn’t even defend me against your bloody fans who insulted me for ‘stealing Lenas Emmy’.”

He managed a weak smile. “To be fair those were more Lenas fans…” Gwen finally turned towards him and he wanted to flinch at the sharp glare she gave him.

He wasn’t used to anger, legitimate anger, from her. He was used to making her laugh,(a lot, loudly and often), he was used to annoying her, pushing her buttons, teasing her, getting her right up to the edge of wanting to shout at him before he’d tell her he was sorry and give her that dorky smile that she couldn’t help but laugh at.

“My career is ruined, Nik,” she said, her posh voice trembling. “It’s hard enough to get jobs period that aren’t bit parts because of my size, now I’m the woman who broke up a marriage, who ruined a family, who had an affair with my co-worker.”

“You didn’t ruin anything, this was my choice too.” Nik stood up from the bed and walked over to her. He wrapped his arms around her slim waist and pulled her to him. The tears shining in her eyes were like a dagger to his chest only he wagered that would have hurt ten times less. 

It broke him having to hear her sobs the day they filmed that God awful goodbye scene, when the director pulled him aside and told him to tell her the biggest lie he had ever uttered in his near fifty years on this earth. 

No one loves you.  **_I_ ** don’t love you anymore. 

And he had done it without argument. Because it was 2 in the morning, he was tired, and exhausted and fighting back his own tears and hearing her beg him to stay with her was torture enough without adding on the extra drama of fighting with the director.

He thought that was the worst thing he would ever have to see or hear. But seeing her in tears for real, knowing he helped caused it… This was true pain, this was true torture.

“Gwen please,” he said again, softly, his accent muffled by his grief. “Please don’t… don’t be upset. We’ll figure this out.” He reached up on his tip-toes and kissed her. She tasted like sharp wintergreen mouthwash and a hint of tobacco from the cigarette she finished not even an hour ago. Sterling menthol, that was her brand. He knew it well; the silver and green package that was always in her coat pocket, he had seen it more than enough times. Nukâka didn’t smoke, Nik either, and he never kissed someone who had before Gwen. The taste was a bit off putting at first, he admitted, but he soon found himself enjoying the minty cool and almost harsh taste of it on her tongue.

“Please,” he muttered against her plump lips that refused to move or open. He reached up with his hand and brushed away a tear from her smooth pale face. “Please don’t be upset… I’ll fix this.” His kissed dragged against her lips, her strong jawline, her cheek, her ear. He nuzzled his face against her impossibly long neck. “Don’t be upset,” he asked, begged, pleaded… Nik sucked and licked and nipped at that spot behind her ear that drew a soft moan from her, no matter how much she hid it. “Please. I’ll fix this. I’ll fix this. I’ll fix this.”

His promise turned into a mantra that he repeated over and over, again and again, a hundred times or a thousand, he wasn’t sure, but he would say it a million times if that was what it would take to make her believe him, for her to feel safe with him again…

Gwen groaned softly and her arms draped around his neck while Nik pressed himself up against her, her body long and trim. A flat stomach and a thinner figure replaced the strong lean muscles she had during filming, a body perfect for modeling. Her hair was longer as well, the ends brushing her shoulders, but was still just as smooth and silky and feather-soft as the first day he ran his hands though it and it just touched the bottom of her ears. 

“Nik,” she breathed as his kisses grew more feverish. “Nik…”

“I’ll fix it,” he whispered against her pale white flesh as he led her to the bed. “I’ll fix it, I will. I’ll fix it…”

The two actors laid down on the soft feather bed and continued their kisses. His hand slid up her blouse and caressed the soft swell of her breast, his cock stirring when he heard her whimper and felt her body rise up just to be closer to his...

“I’ll fix it,” he promised as they pulled off her shirt and the crimson silk bra beneath the dark grey top. 

“I’ll fix it,” he promised before he took a small breast in his mouth and sucked and licked and bit the small pink nipple just how she liked. 

“I’ll fix it,” he promised as he kissed down her smooth pale flat stomach and slowly,  _ slowly _ , unbuttoned and unzipped her trousers and discarded them.

“I’ll fix it,” he promised, leaving a trail of kisses up her creamy white thigh before he buried his face between her long, long, long legs, deeply inhaling the expensive smell of her strawberries and cream body wash and the intoxicating scent of  _ Gwen _ ; sweet and soft and it was his. All his, no matter how many cocks and tongues and fingers she had inside her before him, her scent was made for  _ him, _ her taste was made for  _ him.  _

No one else.

Gwen whimpered and meweld and arched her back high off the bed as he feasted on her slick sweet wetness while he stroked himself as hard and as fast as he could. His five o'clock shadow scratched at her silky smooth skin and his wide tongue lapped at her. His fingers twisted and curled inside her, and she was screaming his name and gasping for more but begging for relief as long thin fingers yanked at his graying brown hair. 

She bucked wildly against his mouth and soon enough his mouth was flooded with her sweetness and Nik moaned as his spilled into his hand moments later. He wiped it off on her thigh and between her soaked legs and she shuddered pleasantly against his touch. 

Nik climbed onto the bed and wrapped his arms around her. He feared for a moment that she might push him away or stay turned away from him but she twisted in his arms and blue eyes gazed into blue, silently for what could have been a moment or a lifetime, it was all the same to them.

“I’ll fix it,” he whispered to her once more. 

A flicker of a smile graced her lips before she leaned in and kissed him, tasting the two of them on his lips. “I know you will,” she breathed, running a soft hand through his hair before she laid her head on his chest and soon enough the two of them fell asleep wrapped in each others embrace, dreams of one another filling their minds…


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gwen & Nik both have houses in LA and are both living in the LA houses right now

Nik stayed in his car for a long while, clutching at the black leather steering wheel. The pictures had leaked out at 7:33 the night before. By 7:34 Nik was calling Gwen asking her to meet at the hotel between their two homes and begging her not to look at social media or look at any texts or answer any calls. At 7:35 he turned his phone off.

It was 11:38 the morning after and the phone was still off.

Nuk’s car was in the driveway but Fillipa’s tiny little yellow clunker they bought her when she was 16 was nowhere to be found which, hopefully, meant at least his daughters wouldn’t be here for this. Tears filled his blue eyes at the thought of them.

Safrina may have been a daddy’s girl through and through but Fillipa and her mother were best friends, she told Nuk everything, her mother was the clear favorite of the two… Fillipa would hate him. He knew she would, she would never forgive him for this… Not to mention both his girls loved Gwen and she loved them in return. She even got Safrina, who wanted to go into fashion designing when she was done with school, a summer job working at Giles studio.

But that was over now as well, he assumed. If they were mad at him there was no telling how much hate and anger they would, rightfully, if he was being honest with himself, have for Gwen or for how long it would last. Even if those two ended up happily ever after there was no telling rather his daughters would ever want to be apart of that happiness.

He knew he would have to face the music eventually, and eventually came sooner rather than later unfortunately. Taking a deep breath that did very little to steel his nerves; Nik walked into the house and there she was.

Nuk sat at the kitchen table; a half empty bottle of wine in front of her. She was angry. She was angrier then he had ever seen her but it was controlled, collected, a calm anger if there was such a thing, but the fire in her brown eyes were screaming her rage.

Feeling a total of three inches tall, Nik, not daring to take a seat, stood at the other end of the simple wooden table. A cold sweat already began to gather on his brow and the longer the two went without saying anything the heavier it became. She pursed her lips at him for a moment before she shrugged, leaning back in the ladder back chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

“What are you doing here?” she asked simply, sharply, not in English but in Danish, not having any sort of patience to speak in her second learned language. 

“I had to see you, talk to you,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Nuk I am so-.”

She shook her head and he quickly silenced himself. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it. You aren’t sorry. If you were sorry you would have come to me, you would have told me, you would have been a man. If you were sorry for what you did I wouldn’t have had to hear it from a friend of mine who found out from her daughter's roommate. I wouldn’t have had to see the pictures of you and that cum soaked whore,” she spat, “all but fucking up against the side of a building.” 

Nik flinched at the harsh insult on Gwen’s behalf but he knew far better then to try to defend her at this moment. 

“If you were sorry,” Nuk continued with a voice so sharp it might have cut him in half, “you never would have done this in the first place.”

He watched as she downed the rest of the wine in her glass, clutching the stem so tight it was a wonder it didn’t crack. “So?”

“So… what, what do you wanna know? I’ll tell you anything you wanna know,” he added, “I’ll be completely honest.”

Nuk laughed and he flinched again. Her deep low laugh that he loved to bring forth was now tainted and poisoned by a bitter anger and hate. “Oh  _ now  _ you’ll be honest.  _ Now _ you’ll tell me the truth, is that right, Nik?” She gave a curt nod. “Fine; you’ll be honest. Alright.” Nuk poured herself another glass of wine. “How long has this been going on?”

“Halfway through filming season 8.”

“Did you ever fuck her in our bed?”

“Never,” he said firmly and quickly. “Not once, we never did anything in this house, not even when you were away. Her’s either; it was always in hotels.”

She gave a curt nod, satisfied with the answer. “How?”

He blinked. “How?”

“How,” she repeated. “That first time were you drunk? Was she? Did she bring you to another smutty sex play and you just couldn’t keep your hands off eachother?”

He swallowed hard. A blush rose to his cheeks. “I-... it just happened. We were in her room after a really long shooting day, we got to drinking, talking and… and it just happened, Nuk. We didn’t plan it.”

“Not that time but how many times did you plan to meet up and fuck after that? How many times did you lie to me and take trips out of the country just to be able to fuck her?”

This was a mistake. He never should have given her carte blanche in regards to questions. Nuk didn’t wait for a response before she spoke again. “What’d she do to you?”

“Nuk-.”

“What?” She shrugged again. “I’ve seen the pictures, she was quite acrobatic in her younger days. Is she still that bendy? Is her tongue as long as her legs? Is that why you decided to cheat?”

“I-... This isn’t-.”

“Oh so I’m not allowed to embarrass you or her in my own home but you two are allowed to humiliate me, you two are allowed to humiliate **_my daughters_** in public?”

The hot angry tears in her brown eyes that she quickly wiped away drove a knife into his heart. He hurried over to her but the moment his arms wrapped around her she stood up from her chair and pushed him away.

“Don’t!” she shouted as more tears fell down her face. “Don’t touch me! You- I stood by you and supported you through  _ everything,  _ Nikolaj! Everything! I was the one who convinced you to take the role in the first place!”

“I know,” he said softly. “I know, Nuk, I-.”

“You didn’t want to play a role where a man fucks his own sister, you didn’t want your kids to see you doing that but I convinced you to take it!” She laughed, a humorless one that muddled with her sobs. “I guess in a karmic way this is all my fault I guess.”

“No.” Nik reached for her hand and she yanked them away again. “None of this is your fault, none of it. Okay I-... I still love you, Nuk. That’ll never change. I’m sorry you had to find out this way, I’m sorry I wasn’t man enough to tell you, I’m sorry I lied to you but one thing I never lied to you about was how much I love you.”

She stared at him for a long while before, finally, she told him. “You have no idea how much I wish I could believe you…”

Nik watched helplessly and hopelessly as Nuk wiped and sniffed away the last of the tears from her eyes. “You can stay here in LA, you can fly back to Greenland, I don’t care.” The sobs had given way to sharpness again. “But the girls don’t want to be around you right now so you’re gonna have to find a place to stay; you can stay in a hotel, in a motel, with that big blonde tart; I don’t care but I won’t make them suffer having you in this house.”

He knew it was coming but that hurt more than anything he had ever heard in his life. His own eyes grew wet but he wouldn’t let his tears fall. He didn’t deserve the relief of tears…

Instead he just nodded. “Can… can I go pack a bag?” he asked, unable to will the shake away from his voice.

“Your clothes are already packed in a suitcase at the top of the stairs,” she informed him. “I did it this morning after the girls left. Go and choose whatever else you wanna bring.”

He gave her a nod and, bowing his head in shame, Nik made his way up the stairs and into the bathroom he shared with his wife. He grabbed his soap, shampo, conditioner, an expensive and everyday bottle of cologne and his shaving things. His deodorant was almost gone anyway so he would just pick up a new one at the store, and after that he headed into the bedroom. 

He bit his lip as he looked around the room full of memories, happy and light, sexy and awe inducing… It was simple, not a lot of fanfare to it (they were Danish after all) and it used to be theirs. Not any longer though. 

He choose a photo of him and his daughters smiling and laughing at Disney World, then a picture of him and Nuk at a beach with their arms wrapped around each other grinning at the camera along with all the photos of his friends and his side of the family.

After he stuffed everything into the suitcase she provided (and to her credit she did seem to pack most if not all of what he would have grabbed) he went down to the living room where, he noticed with a flinch, the Brienne doll he was supposed to give to Gwen but kept for himself that he kept in the corner of the living room on the back of a chair, had been thrown violently across the room. He had to bite back a laugh when he realized the dolls right arm had started to come undone at the seam from the force of the throw.

_ How’s that for karma?  _ he thought with a sad chuckle as he went over and picked it up, adding that to the suitcase as well.

When he was was done he went back out to the kitchen where Nuk had, somewhat, calmed down.

“I know I have no right to ask anything of you but can… can you tell the girls I love them and tell them I  _ never _ meant to hurt either of them?” he asked, half desperate. “And tell them I won’t call them if they don’t want me too but when they’re ready they can call me anytime.”

Far quicker then he would have thought she would have, Nuk nodded. “I will,” she promised. 

“Thanks.”

Neither one moved, neither one spoke. Finally after a moment Nik gave her a sad little smile before he turned and started to walk out.

All the way to the car, down the driveway, down the interstate and when he checked into his hotel for an ‘extended stay’, he wished that she would call him to come in back.

She never did.

But, the moment the door shut behind him, it wasn’t Nuk he texted but Gwen. 

**Room 1098 Marriott on the 102 under the name James Caster**

Soon afterwards he fell asleep and once again; his dreams were full of the tall leggy blonde, gasping and moaning, crying out his name in her posh accent, and in his slumber, for the first time that day; he smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

Gwen walked into her home, heart slamming against her chest and lungs tightening with every breath. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to talk to him, she didn’t want to see the pain in his pale blue eyes, she NEVER wanted that… Giles was her other half; quiet and serious in areas where Gwen was loud and laughing, bold in places she was shy, and good God was the man brilliant when it came to their shared obsessions. 

He and her could spend hours discussing clothes, fabrics, fashion, couture, a single piece from a collection, modern art, traditional art, art in all forms and neither one ever grew bored with the topic at hand. He understood the deep never ending emotions and love Gwen had tied to fashion more than anyone else because those same feelings ensnared Giles as well. 

That was something she could never share with Nik. 

No matter how much she wanted him to realize couture went so much further than just ‘expensive clothes’ to her, he never understood it or, if she was being honest with herself, cared enough about high end fashion to want to learn.

But for all their mutual interests; he could never make her laugh as much as Nik did. He made her smile, yes, and she could have intellectual conversations about anything that came to mind, but Nik made her laugh. He made her laugh, he teased her, he knew what buttons to push her that brought her right to the edge before he brought her back with an apology and a smile. They could argue over rather it was his turn or hers to buy coffee the same amount of time that Giles and her could talk about the folds of fabric on the fringe of an Armani jacket with equal uninhabited passion.

Gwen didn’t see him in the living room nor at the kitchen table so after she reached the most logical conclusion she headed to his small studio on the second floor of the four story home they shared. 

At first glance it looked rather chaotic. Completed, half completed and barely started sketches covered one wall while hundreds of swatches of fabrics in various colors and fabrics covered another and sketch books, empty and every last page full, filled two bookcases that stood on either side of the door. A full array of colored and black pencils, pens and markers of various points, paints ranging from black to white and every color in between, expensive and cheap crayolas alike, littered the desk. In the corner stood two manikins, male and female both. While the girl remained undressed the male bust had gold silk pinned around his waist and floated out like a skirt.

But every single thing was in its proper place; the swatches were arranged by fabric then color, the sketches on the wall were organized by first drafts, second drafts and final drafts (the last stage before he put needle and thread to fabric) the sketchbooks were sorted by year, even the wide array of art supplies each had their own drawer at the white marble desk Giles was sitting at. 

He sat hunched over his sketchbook, scribbling intently with a yellow pencil while bright light shined down on his latest creation. His cigarette, the Sterling regular to her Sterling menthol, laid forgotten in the ashtray next to him; still smoking but nothing more than a pile of grey ash.

His hand stilled when she first walked into the room, but only for a moment before his hand was moving across the paper again, not slow and fluid but sharp and hurried. She took another step closer to his work space, then another, until she was standing beside his desk.

The tension was so thick you could have cut it with a dull knife. She was grateful when he took the initiative to speak first, though his words were the last thing she suspected.

“I can’t get it right,” he told her, dragging the marker across the page in sharp shallow strokes. “I can picture it perfectly, it’s just not happening on the page.”

Gwen glanced down at the drawing; a tall ebony skinned man in a gold style skirt and a yellow-brown corset. It wasn’t one of his better drawings, to be sure, but it wasn’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination. “It seems fine to me.”

“It’s not. It’s bloody rubbish,” he grumbled, tearing out the sheet of his notebook, crumpling the paper into a ball of gold and black and tossing it into the waste bin beside his desk. She bit her lip as she watched him quickly flip to a new page in his sketchbook and picked up his marker and began to draw, all without looking at her. 

“Giles, you… Do you want to talk?” He didn’t answer her, and rather just continued the slow shallow strokes of his instrument. “Because we can.” More deafening silence. “Whatever you want to do, we can; we can talk, we can drink, you can ask me whatever you want, you can yell, curse, scream…”

“.2 might work better,” he muttered to himself, reaching in his drawer and pulling out a super fine marker before he turned back to the drawing.

“Giles, please.”

His hand stilled for half a blink before he was drawing again. “I need to get this done,” he said without looking up at her. “I need to get this right and it’s not- fuck!” He threw down the marker rather forcefully when he found that one didn’t quite work out for whatever he was picturing in his mind either and buried his face in his hands. 

Gwen swallowed hard at the display. If there was one thing she could say for her boyfriend; it was that he never lost his temper, especially while he was sketching. That was when he was at his most serene, that when he was most calm.

Giles finally turned to look up at her. She saw no fire or fury, hate or anger, just sadness and pleading. He would deny it if asked but she swore she saw his pale blue eyes grow wet behind his black times glasses. “Love, please just… please?” he begged, for what he didn’t speak out loud, but she knew what he wanted, what he needed from her then and he had every right in the world to ask her for it and she had none left to refuse him.

She took a step away from him and after telling him whenever he wanted to speak she would be there for him, tried to press a quick kiss to his cheek then pretended it didn’t sting worse, than anything else when he pulled away before she could, and walked out of the crowded room. 

Gwen expected him to submerge an hour later while she sat on their couch with a glass of wine and a cigarette. Or three hours later when the background noise on the TV failed to drown out her thoughts, or five hours later when she sat alone at their kitchen table after a sad attempt at making bangers and mash, his favorite meal. Giles was the cook, not her. Her cooking was passable at best on a good day and today was most assuredly NOT a good day… The bangers were half burnt, the mash was lumpy but it didn’t matter in the end. Giles didn’t come up for dinner anyway and soon after she realized that, Gwen slumped off to bed, wiping tears she knew she didn’t have a right to from her eyes.

Just as she was settling in for the night he finally came to the room, not going any further then the door frame. He didn’t look at her; he just stared down at the carpet, hands in his pocket and sketchbook under his arm with a black pencil behind his ear. 

“I think it might be best if I sleep in the guest bed,” he told her, voice even and calmly steady as always.

“I can sleep there,” she offered. “You should have the room.”

Giles shook his head. “I’ll be fine. Besides you’re already getting ready for bed so…” Blue eyes met blue and he offered her a sad little smile. “Have a good night, love.”

“Girls wait,” she pleaded but he was already halfway down the hallway and a second later she heard the guest room door open and shut. Gwen fell back against the pillow, harshly wiping away the wetness in her eyes with the back of her hand only to have more tears take its place. 

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair to him, he deserved better than this, he deserved better than to have his heart thrown into a blender by the woman he loved, he deserved better than to be completely and utterly heartbroken all because she wanted to have her cake and eat it too. 

Gwen should have left the moment she realized she was in love with Nik as well. They weren’t married, they shared no kids, they didn’t even have a pet to fight custody over. They bought their two houses together but that was all and she would have given him the house in London if she was allowed to keep the one in LA. It would have been a clean easy split but she was selfish; she wanted weekends with Nik and weekdays with Giles, and now they were all paying the price.

Not knowing what else to do, she decided to call the other person suffering right alongside her. For the first time since last night she turned on her phone and immediately her notifications lit up like beacons.

Over 50,000 IG comments, 100,000 plus twitter notifications, 83 missed calls and lords know how many messages ranging from a simple ‘???’ from Daniel to Alfie begging her to call her and an affirmation of love from her closest Thrones friend after Nik. There was an angry ‘what the fuck is wrong with you two?’ from Lena, a ‘stay strong’ and a heart emoji from Emilia and a hundred more not just from her Thrones co stars and crew but her friends and former costars all of them either offering support or asking for more clarity then what TMZ provided. Scrolling past all those she found a new message from Nik at the top of the page sent earlier in the day. A simple one sentence text, similar to a hundred other ones she’d received before.

**Room 1098 Marriott on the 102 under the name James Caster**

She rolled her eyes at the name, shooting back, ‘ **way** **to be subtle with the name.’**

Not even thirty seconds passed when his reply came.  **‘R u comin or not?’**

Short, simple, to the point, a world away from his usual joke filled texts and simple emoticons. He usually would mock her excessive emojis, she would tease him about the misspelled words and shorthand… She wasn’t a fan of this sharpness.

Biting her lip, Gwen thought of the man sleeping down the hall, who kept himself locked away from her, who was hurting, who would hear her footsteps walk past the guest door, who would know exactly who she was going to go see when he heard the front door open. It would kill him.

_ I could lie, _ she thought to herself. Giles might not believe her but he would have appreciated an obvious lie as opposed to an open truth. 

Taking a deep breath, she quickly typed back her response, a short simple  **‘yes’** and sent it before she could talk herself out of it, trying her best to believe her own words when she told herself that everything would work out for the best...


	4. Chapter 4

Nik panted as he slammed into Gwen, hands gripping her hips as he pulled her back onto him over and over, her whimpers and moans a symphony to his ears.

“You’re my little slut aren’t you?” he gasped, pumping between her legs, the hard and rough and fast way he knew she liked. Gwen didn’t want softness and lovemaking and slow intimacy most nights. She liked being fucked with restraints and paddles, domination and insults, toys and gear that he’d never even heard of prior to meeting her…

When Gwen answered with nothing but a long, drawn out moan he spanked her hard on the ass, flooding the pink warmth between her legs.

“I said,” he growled with another sharp slap, resisting the urge to rub away the pain from the bright red handmark (she liked the feel of the sting, she told him half a hundred times) “you’re my dirty little slut aren’t you?”

“Yes!” she gasped, throwing back her head and pushing herself back on his cock. “I am! am! I’m your filthy FUCKING slut! Oh God! Oh God, Nik!”

Gwen reached up and took them hand holding her face down, guiding it to her long pale neck. The man on top of her quickly curled into a fist so that his fingers weren’t wrapped around her throat and lightly squeezing the way he knew she wanted them to. It was the one thing he could never bring himself to give her.

“Please,” Gwen begged between moans, trying to position his hand around her neck again but with the same results. “Nik, please.”

To help appease her, he grabbed a fistful of the pale blonde hair and yanked back, hard. The high pitched gasp and whimpers that followed drove him to the absolute brink of insanity.

“Harder!” she gasped and begged, pushing back on him as he slammed into her. “Please! Harder!”

He did as he was asked. Nik pushed her face down in the pillow thrusting inside her as fast as he could, as hard as he could. Gwen was moaning, gasping, screaming out for more pain, for more hair pulling, more spanking, more fucking, more anything to give her the relief she seeked so desperately. 

His hips thrust into her harder and more frantic, gasping and grunting and crying out her name over and over, again and again. He put his hand between her legs and rubbed at her clit punishingly hard until she screamed his name to the heavens. Moments later he spilled into her with a roar loud enough to wake the dead and collapsed on top of her, trembling and desperate for breath while he softened inside her warmth.

Beneath him Gwen was gasping for air, whimpering in protest when he pulled out and flopped down beside her, staring up at the ceiling. “That was…” he gasped and she chuckled through her deep breaths before they turned to look at one another.

She was an absolute vision; pale face flushed, straw blonde hair mussed and eyes dark blue in the dim light of the hotel. Hand prints in fading shades of red littered her breasts, thighs, lower lips and ass but none on her face, even though she asked him for it. That was another thing he refused to give into. 

“You know for such a feminist you love being treated like shit in the bedroom,” Nik laughed one time after a particularly rough time together. 

Gwen smirked at the man who had been laying beside her. “Who’s the one telling you what you’re allowed to do and how fur you’re allowed to go?”

“You.”

“Mmm. And who’s the one who tells you to stop if it gets too much?”

“You, although you haven’t done that yet.”

“That’s because you’re afraid of hurting me,” she replied with a mocking smile before she reached down and grabbed his flaccid cock, her nails digging into his flesh. Nik yelped in pain but at the same time he felt himself growing hard in her hand. “I’m the one who tells you where to put it in,” Gwen whispered in his ear, flicking her tongue out and licking at the flesh. “I tell you how to put it in, and what to do with me once you’re in. If anyone’s in charge here; it’s me.” She let him go and rolled back over on her hands and knees, arching her long back like a cat, shooting him a sinful grin as she purred in her high class accent; “now get over here and fuck me while you call me a whore.”

Gwen nuzzled closer to the pillow, neither of them taking their eyes off the other. “Are you okay?” she asked him, posh voice soft and sweet.

“No,” he answered honestly. “I miss my girls. I’ve been away from them while shooting and whatnot but this feels different.”

She ran a long finger down his shoulder. “I know. It feels more permanent.” Gwen looked down at the white sheets underneath her. “Like you know it’ll be different the next time you see them.”

Nik frowned at the blonde. She was hurting; Gwen was hurting, he was hurting, the people they loved were hurting… This was supposed to be fun. This was supposed to be exciting and sensual, this was supposed to be new and different, something neither of them had in seven years for her and almost twenty for him, it was supposed to bring him and Gwen happiness and pleasure, which it had in the beginning,. But now… now it just brought misery and broken hearts and guilt and there was nothing any of them could do to relieve that.

Well... there was one thing…

Nik leaned over and kissed her, tender and mild, lips barely pressing against hers. She responded in kind, and there was a soft gentleness to the way she moved her velvety lips against his. He kissed the corner of her lips, her strong jawline, and slowly moved his kisses to that particular spot behind her ear. When she groaned in his ear he felt what was between his legs start to stir.

“You can’t fix everything with sex, you know,” Gwen moaned, biting her lip to hold back the whimper that threatened to escape.

“I say I can,” he whispered against her skin, reaching out with his tongue and tracing her collarbone. “And I’m always right.”

Gwen snorted as she wrapped her arms around him. “You’re never right, Nikolaj.”

He reached between them and combed his fingers through the well manicured patch of blonde curls and rubbed exactly where she needed. Her whimpers in his ear and the way her nails dug into his back and the way she pulled him down on top of her even tighter so she could feel all of him on top of all of her cleared his mind of any thoughts of Nuk or his daughters or his spokesman until all that was left was Gwen. Gwen and her warm wet cunt and her soft silky skin and dazzling blue eyes and her long long legs wrapped around him.

Nik rolled his hips and just as he went to take one of her small perky breasts into his mouth his phone erupted with the sounds of his wife singing, the custom tone he had for Nuk when she called.

They both froze for a moment and the two of them stared at his phone, as if just by the ringing alone she knew what they had been doing. 

“It might be something with the girls,” Nik told the blonde woman underneath him. 

“Yes, of course,” she said, slipping underneath the silk sheets and down blankets as Nik went to grab his phone. 

“What’s going on?” he answered the call in Danish, half hoping she would follow suit so the conversation might be in a way private.

“Take a look at your daughters Instagram, that’s what’s going on!” Nuk barked through the earpiece not in Danish as he hoped, but in English.

Biting back a sigh Nik sat up in the bed and opened his IG, going to Fillipa’s page. The first thing he noticed was while he still followed her, Fillipa no longer followed his page.

Terrific.

The second thing of note was her last post and he felt the color drain from his face. It was a screenshot of Gwen’s IG account, blank of any photos and an ‘unblock’ option where the following button would normally be and a short and simple hashtag of #TeamNuk in the captions. 

“Your fans are CRUCIFYING her for that!” Nuk yelled through the phone. “They’re calling her a spoiled little girl, they’re saying she’s a prude, they’re insulting her for blocking that piece of tall trash!” 

Gwen glanced over at Nik for a moment before her eyes fluttered down to the bedspread, a hot shame painting her face crimson. 

“Nuk, calm down,” Nik urged his wife, skimming through the comments. Most of them filled with well wishes and supportive comments, even from those with aviators of him or Gwen or both, Lena even liked the post and commented a string of heart emojis. There was an occasional ‘stay mad and die lol’ or ‘you’re hating the woman your dad loves but keep being a bitch…’ “Okay they’re not  _ that _ bad, and it’s really not that many.” 

“They’re going after your  **_daughter_ ** , Nik!”

“I know, I know and I’ll- I’ll handle it okay? I promise.” He sighed and pushed the hair from his face. “Is Fillipa there?”

“She doesn’t wanna talk to you.”

“Can I hear her say that?” he asked, doing his best to keep the fire from his tone. If Nuk was keeping his daughters from him because of this...

A beat of silence and then, “Fillipa, your father wants to talk to you.”

The loud long string of curses coming from what sounded like the other room aimed at him proved his wife wasn’t lying. He wasn’t sure if he made that better or worse…

“I won’t lie to you about the girls,” Nuk said dryly. “The moment they want to hear from you, they’ll hear from you.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“Fix this, Nikolaj.  _ Now _ ,” was the final word on the subject before she hung up.

He swallowed hard before he glanced over at a still blushing Gwen. “I’m sorry,” he told her, gently rubbing her shoulder.

She shrugged, still looking down at the bed. “She has a right to be angry at me. Her and your daughter's both.”

“I know but…” Nik bit his lip. “For what it’s worth the three of them loved you before… before this.”

Gwen snapped her head up. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she demanded. The way her blue eyes burned and narrowed told made him feel all of three inches tall. “Knowing that I helped ruin the family of a woman and two young girls who liked me?”

“I- no, but I just-...” He groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. That was the wrong thing to say.” 

“Oh you think?”

Nik sighed as he pulled up his photos, scrolling to the latest picture of him and Fillipa at the latest Leeds game. Tears gathered in his eyes as he looked at the photo of his little girl, his first born, the person he and Nuk waited their whole lives to meet, the one who wanted to get into acting because she saw how much fun Nik had. 

She looked like him. She had the same big eyes, the same jawline, the same brown hair that started out blonde and darkened as she aged. Fillipa may have been a Mama's girl but Nik loved her more than any words could have said.

And he hurt her because he didn’t want to man up and tell Nuk the truth or tell Gwen he wanted to end it.

Opening up his IG he posted the photo of him and Fillipa, making sure to tag her and captioning it, ‘I love my daughters more than anything else in this world. I know I hurt them and I would give anything to take that pain away. They have a right to their anger at me ~~and Gwen~~. Please don’t make this any harder on them then it already is.’

After having Gwen double check it for spelling he posted it with a single tap of his thumb. He quickly put the phone down before he could see any of the responses. He leaned back against the headboard, grateful when Gwen wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. “I’m sorry you’re going through this,” said Gwen as gently as she could.

He ran his fingers through her feather soft hair. “You're going through it too.”

“I don’t have kids in the mix, thank God.” She nuzzled up closer to him. 

Nik continued running his fingers through her blonde locks and sooner rather than later he felt her relax against him. “Do you want them?”

“Hmm?”

“Children. Do you want them?”

“God no,” Gwen sighed content as she pulled the blankets over them. Nik did his best not to still his movements or tense up. “Don’t get me wrong they’re fantastic when you can hand them back to their parents after you’re done or when they’re old enough to take care of themselves but no.”

“You’d make a good mother.”

“Thank you,” she muttered against his skin, eyes already closing. “But the answer is still no.”


	5. Chapter 5

Gwen awoke like she did most times she and Nik were lucky enough to spend the night with each others without any particular place to be that morning; their bodies tangled together, arms wrapped around each other and one of their legs usually hooked over the other one. It usually brought a sense of contentment but there was something different this morning, something she couldn’t nail down but she knew she wasn’t a fan of it. 

It made her feel anxious and nervous, which was hilarious because it was all out in the open now, things should have been easier but instead she just felt… Bad. She could tell herself what Giles didn’t know didn’t hurt him, what Nik’s family didn’t know didn’t hurt them, and it was the truth. 

Things were easier when they were having the affair, because no one was hurt. Now; all she could think of was Giles would know what happened when he woke up and her car was missing. He would know exactly where she was, who she was with and what she had done… It would hurt him. It would break his heart even more then what it already was, and she was the reason for it.

Slowly and silently as to not wake him, Gwen untangled herself from Nik but not before giving him a quick kiss and headed into the bathroom, grabbing her overnight bag on the way. After she was done readying herself for the morning she walked back out to the main room, wearing nothing more than a pale pink silk sleep slip, where she was able to grab her vibrating phone just in time to see Alfie was calling (for the eighth time since the news broke.)

Deciding it was better to get it over with and knowing there was no one else she would have rather wanted to break the comms blackout with then him, she took a deep breath, and answered with a pleading, “please don’t yell at me.”

There was a beat and then, “you’re a hard woman to get ahold of.”

“Yes well when you’re the most hated woman in the world you tend to ignore your phone.” 

Gwen grabbed her cigarettes and sat besides the window so she could blow her smoke outwards (even though Nik had been curtious enough to get a smoking room she still had flashbacks to the time she accidently set off the smoke alarm so the hotel had to evacuate and she had to hide in the bathroom so none of the onlookers would notice the two of them were sharing the same room. Nik laughed about that one for weeks.) 

“You are grossly exaggerating the amount of people who hate you for this.”

“Really?” she asked, a flash of hope in her tone.

“...Not really. But it’ll all blow over soon,” he assured her, but all she did was sink down lower in her chair. “Next week another celebrity will say or do something that people will vilify them for and this whole mess will be forgiven and forgotten.”

Gwen took a deep drag from her glowing stick in a failing attempt to calm her nerves. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“Have you forgiven and forgotten what I’ve done?”

The second it took Alfie to answer was one of the longest moments in her life.

“After all you helped me through, after everything I’ve talked to you about, after everything you’ve done for me you really think I’m gonna sit and judge you for this? You’re one of my best friends, Gwen. That won’t ever change, no matter what you do.”

Tears welled in her eyes that she tried her best to blink away. One of the numberius weights that had been firmly lodged on her shoulders lifted off and evaporated into clouds of smoke. She sniffed and took another drag, hands trembling with gratitude all the while. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her posh airs crumbled the longer she tried to hold back her tears. “I… I really appreciate that, Alfie. More than you know.” 

“Don’t go getting soft on me now, love. Only I’m allowed to do that.” 

She laughed, and wiped away the last of the offending drops of moisture from her eyes. “My mistake.” Gwen took one for all drag before extinguishing the last of the cigarette in the ashtray. “Suppose I better ask now but what’s everyone else saying? I haven’t checked the group chat since Tuesday.”

“Well I’m 100% on your side, Emilia too and you know Peter would go to bat for Nik no matter what he did. Sophie is more pissed at the paparazzi and TMZ then either of you but she’s saying apart from you, Nik, Nuk, Giles and his kids it’s not anyone’s business. Kit hasn’t said anything at  **_all_ ** and Lena is…”

“What?” she asked, her stomach turning into a hard slab of stone the longer he waited. “What’d she say?”

“She… Lena said she… hated… you two. For what you did…”

Gwen bowed her head at the news. She and Lena weren’t super close but were still friends, they still vacationed together, they still kept in touch after the show, they laughed at the fans tweets and IG comments who pinned the actresses against one another. Hell Cersei was Gwen’s favorite character behind Brienne and Catelyn Stark, and Lena was rooting for Jaime and Brienne’s happy ending from their very first episode together.

So knowing she was angry at her for this? It hurt. A lot. But what hurt even worse was knowing she was mad at Nik too, and knowing how deep that would cut him. Nik was as close to Lena as Gwen was close to Alfie, her hating him for the affair would crush him and Nik would end up losing another person he cared about because they wanted to be selfish, because the stars didn’t want to align in their favor, because neither of them wanted to hurt the people they loved but by keeping it a secret they ended up doing exactly that.

Ignoring Alfie asking her if she was alright, she bid him goodbye and hung up, leaning her head back against the wall as tears leaked from pale blue eyes and streamed down her cheeks. 

There was a soft groan from the bed and then a second later Nik sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He looked over at the tall blonde sitting beside the window and gifted her a tired smile before he realized the tears in her eyes and any happiness disappeared as quickly as it had come.

“What happened?” he demanded, stumbling out of bed and pulling on his boxers. As Nik hurried over to her and kneeled in front of her chair, she covered her mouth with a hand in a vein attempt to muffle her cries. He reached up and buried a hand in her pale blonde hair, running his fingers through the straw colored trestles in a hopeless attempt to calm her down. “Gwen, what‘s wrong?” 

Shaking her head, she uncovered her mouth just long enough to draw an unsteady breath. “You- you need to talk to your daughters,” she whispered in a voice heavy with tears and agony. “Please. Please you can’t lose them because of this, you can’t- you can’t lose your family because of me, you can’t lose your daughters because of what I did, you-...”

Any other words Gwen could have attempted to say were cut off by a heaving sob. Before she could even blink Nik’s arms were wrapped tightly around her and she was clinging at him like they were the only two things left on this earth. “You can’t lose them, you can’t!”

“Shh shh shh, it’s okay,” he whispered in her ear, his accented voice as soft as a sigh. “It’s alright, Gwen, it’s alright…”

“You’re hurting, you don’t- you don’t have them, you’re hurting and it’s all my fault!”

He pulled away from her and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Look at me,” Nik pleaded and she answered with a stubborn shake of her head, burying her face in the crook of his neck. “Gwen please.”

After a minute of burying she was finally able to console herself, to a reasonable degree at least, she finally pulled away enough to be able to look him in the eyes. He reached up and gently brushed the salty streaks from her face and she placed her hand over his, not wanting his touch to go away.

“It’s not your fault,” he told her. A lie if there ever was one. “Okay it’s-... we made a mistake by hiding it from them,” he said simply. “A beautiful, amazing mistake that I don’t regret for a second, but a mistake I made just as much as you did. I could have told Nuk at any time, I could have stopped us during our first kiss or our first time or any of the other times after that, but I didn’t. What happens with Fillipa and Safrina is on me, Gwen, no one else.” His words were absolute and the love in his eyes was unwavering. “You are not allowed to blame yourself for what happens with my family.”

She blinked away the last of her tears and nodded, more to appease him then because she would accept his plea not to burden herself with guilt. “Will you please just… will you please talk to them? I know they’re angry at you but the thought of you hurting because of us, just… please?”

Nik gnawed at his lip for a moment before he nodded. “I will,” he said. “I’ll go over to the house tomorrow and talk to them okay?” Nik sealed the promise with a kiss, the salty taste of her tears mingling with their lips.

Instead of pulling away their kisses grew deeper, and more impassioned. Gwen stood up along with Nik, their tongues gliding over one another slow and carefully as if they were tasting each other for the first time instead of the hundredth. They held one another for a long while besides that window, trading soft kisses and softer touches until he told her he needed to take a shower and asked her to join him.

She accepted the offer without hesitation and a minute or so later they were standing underneath the hot spray together. 

Nik drizzled a bit of her shampoo in his hand and worked it into a lather, being careful not to get the expensive suds in her eyes when he rinsed it out and followed it by running the thick floral scented conditioner through her pale blonde hair. After her hair was washed Nik poured a bit of her strawberry and cream body wash into a washcloth and slowly ran it over her body, earning a soft moan from her lips that he swallowed with another kiss. 

He started with her neck and then ran the cloth over her collarbones. His hand trailed the sudsy wash-cloth when he pulled it across her small breasts, and she whimpered as his fingers trailed across her nipples.

His lips danced along her long neck as the washcloth made its way down her stomach, the sweet scent of the body wash intoxicating the two of them past the point of sense. Gwen closed her eyes and rolled her hips as his hand disappeared between her legs. He ran the soft slippery washcloth against her skin, setting her on fire and filling her belly with an impossibly painful ache.

“Nik,” she gasped, not even noticing as he dropped the washcloth and rubbed at her clit with his fingers. “Nik, please...”

His other hand reached around her and lightly fingered her nipples, and when she felt his cock, already at full attention pressing against her ass she ground against him, earning a loud moan and a raspy, “Gwen…” as a reward. 

She twisted in his arms and the moment she did his lips were on hers. Stormy blue eyes drank in her body as she stood bare before him and then his hands were on her hips and pulling her against him and then was pressing her up against the shower wall, lips and tongue dancing against hers as they held each other tight against one another. She put her foot up on the edge of the thankfully over-sized tub and cried out to the heavens as he pushed into her.

He moved slow and gentle inside her with a tenderness she normally would have balked at but there were some instances when intimacy and softness was needed far more than the pain and degradation she craved most nights.

Right now was definitely one of those times.

Blue eyes stayed locked on blue as he moved in and out of her warmth, holding each other tight, needing to be as close to the other as human boundaries would allow them to be. When they came his earth wasn’t shattered and she didn’t scream to the heavens, it happened as gentle as their lovemaking had been in that instance.

“I love you, Gwen,” Nik whispered as he gazed up at her. 

“I love you too,” she breathed, nuzzling the crook of his neck. She pressed a kiss to his muscled shoulder as the hot water washed over them. “So much, Nikolaj. So much…”

There it was. The reason why they were both here in this hotel room, the reason why they weren’t at home with their partners, with the people they cared about, safe and content with the ones that could have made them happy and satisfied without a single issue had she and Nik not met.

He loved her. And Gwen loved him in return. The stars hadn’t aligned in their favor, they had to rewrite the stars to fit what they wanted. They hurt others they loved to do it but if you loved someone, as selfish as it sounded, as guilty as it made them feel sometimes, sometimes that pain was worth it.

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Gwen walked into her home, head bowed and heart cracking under the pressure. She still had no idea what she was going to tell Giles about where she had gone the prior night but, she selfishly hoped, he would figure it out on his own and not ask her where she had been.

He was where he usually was during times of crisis for him, in his tiny studio, only this time he wasn’t seated at his desk drawing or sketching he was, very carefully, filling up a large cardboard box with the sketchbooks that filled the two metal bookshelves top to bottom with his back turned to her.

Watching as he kneeled next to the box, marking it ‘Jan 07- Oct 08’ before he taped it shut, adding it to the other three he had stacked in the corner, Gwen bit back her tears, refusing to let them come. She had no right to tears or sorrow or grief that he was packing up his things, she had no right to feel hurt or pained when she was the cause of all this.

Taking a moment to console herself she lightly knocked on the door and stepped in. He finally looked over at her and gave her a sad sort of smile, like a smile a dying man might give his wife when he finally accepted the inevitability of the diagnosis. 

Only she didn’t want him to accept it. She wanted him to fight like hell.

“Hey, love,” he greeted her as he stood up from the ground. “I wasn’t sure what time you’d be back but I figured I might as well start packing up things.”

Giles wasn’t going to ask her where she had been because he had already figured it out. She wasn’t sure if what she felt was relief that she had been spared the questioning or guilt. 

“No, no I understand.” Her eyes may have been dry but her voice cracked and betrayed the tears that wanted to fall. “Do… do you have a place to go?”

Of course he did. He was an award winning designer living in LA who was friendly and friends with everyone from the head of other labels to the cashiers in the restaurant in the building his main studio was housed in. The man had designed for the royal family for God sake but even still; he would have asked the same of her, he would have wanted her safe and protected just like she wanted him.

“I’m actually checking out an apartment near the studio next week,” he told her. “It's nothing much, just a place to sleep between meets with clients. Then tomorrow I’m going to check into a hotel a few blocks west of here.”

Gwen looked down at the carpeted floor beneath her feet. The tip of her shoe covered two black circular burns. One she had made when the two of them once came home so drunk they couldn’t find their way to the bedroom and just fell asleep on the floor of his studio and she passed with a lit cigarette in hand. They discovered it the next afternoon when they woke up and she spent a good ten minutes apologizing profusely (he designed the carpet specifically for his studio because he said the colors and pattern helped to brighten his creativity), before Giles, without a word of fury or so much as a look of annoyance she ruined his carpet, lit one of his own and put a matching burn mark right besides hers.

“Now it’s a patterned aesthetic,” he had said with a smile.

She drew her plump lip in her teeth and looked anywhere but at him hoping to avoid the icy blue of his eyes. “You don’t… I mean if you don’t want to, obviously you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but the house is large enough, we have 6 bedrooms, eight baths… We wouldn’t ever have to barely see one another… until you found a permanent place...”

Giles pursed his lips, and shrugged, also looking down at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Do you want me to stay?” he asked, posh British accent unsure of what the right answer was supposed to be.

“Do you want to stay?”

“Would you mind if I wanted to stay?”

“Of course not… do you want to stay?”

“I feel like we’re runnin’ round in circles, love.”

Gwen chuckled and the corner of her lips tugged upwards. She finally looked up the same moment he did and blue eyes met blue. “I want you to stay if you’re comfortable staying around me,” she finally said, ending the runaround.

He smiled at her, just a small hint but it was there and gave a curt nod. “Then I’ll stay. Thank you, love.”

God he was so soft. He was soft, tender, mild mannered, sweet, gentle… She destroyed their relationship, she had humiliated him in the public eye, something he absolutely hated being in on a good day to the point it was a miracle he didn’t have a panic attack every time he stepped onto the red carpet, and he was still soft with her, he still smiled at her, he still called her his pet name.

Giles did so much for her and she had an affair behind his back as thanks. He set aside his introverted sense of self, his diagnosed anxiety, his shyness… He set all that aside just to support her and she repaid him with selfish decisions and cruelty. 

The two of them looked at one another for a long moment, blue eyes melting into blue, before she forced herself to look away. Gwen took another deep breath and nodded towards the desk crowded with colored pencils and markers and papers all with vaguely similar drawings but each one a little bit different then the last.

“How are the sketches for Billy coming?” she asked, figuring that was a safe topic.

Any hint of soft happiness left him. “Not good,” he admitted in a sad almost embarrassed mutter. Giles walked over to the desk and spaced the sketches out so she might be able to see them better. “He wants to invoke the feeling of royalty, of Kensington Palace itself and none of these fit.”

Gwen frowned down at the sketches, all of some shade of gold. “It absolutely has to be silk,” she mused out loud and he nodded in agreement both. “You can’t conjure an image of nobility without it.”

“And a mandarian collar as well,” Giles added. He shifted through some of the drawings and held one out to her. The bodice was pure gold sparkled with a high collar that would have shone like a diamond in the LA sun. The tiered skirt bottom was made of different shades of gold. “I’m thinking silk duchess for the bottom.”

“Oh that would be absolutely stunning.”

“Thank you, but all of these just scream ‘gold’, not royalty or more importantly it says nothing about the palace itself which is what he’s going for.” Giles sighed as he dropped the drawing back onto the desk. “Billy feels like he’s a representative for his communities, he’s doing things no other man is willing to do on the red carpet, blurring the lines between feminine and masculine, letting men know it’s okay to step out of their comfort zones and he’s trusting his entire persona to me, every single element of this gown will be made into a statement. If I fail him-.”

“You won’t.” Her voice was so sure and so strong that even Giles was rather taken aback. He turned to look at the tall blonde who, without even thinking of the implication, reached down and took his hands in hers. “I know you Giles. You will get that stroke of brilliance at 3 am and start sketching so you won’t forget it come morning and you’ll end up finishing the final draft by the time the sun rises.” This time it was her turn to smile at him as she reminded him of the time he woke her out of a dead sleep at five in the morning, far too excited to wait until the morning, to show her a gorgeous sketch of her in an enchanting one shouldered forest green draping gown with a long train, the dress she asked him to design for her for Midsummers Night Dream so she could carry a part of him on stage with her every night.

She asked Nik to come see the play, her first endeavor after Thrones, and he swore he was going to but unfortunately time and distance and commitments made it impossible. He had since apologized half a hundred times for missing her play, both in words and in actions in the bedroom, and she always told him it was fine. There would be other plays, there would be other chances to see her perform live.

She always told herself the sting of him not finding the time to see her play would fade to nothing. 

Eventually.

Giles opened his mouth to say something and then glanced down at her hands still holding onto his before she realized what she was doing and she pulled her hands back, blushing slightly.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“No no it’s… it’s alright, Love.” He cleared his throat and motioned to his desk. “I should get back to work.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll see you later.”

Gwen went to leave his studio when he called out for her. “I… I forgot to mention something. Safrina, she emailed my assistant this morning.”  _ No. Please no. _ “She told Kassie she no longer wanted the internship. Thought it might be too awkward.”

Tears flew to her eyes. After Giles those girls, those sweet, intelligent kind girls were the LAST people she wanted to hurt and knowing she was the cause of it? She was the cause of the trolls on Filippas IG, of Safrina no longer wanting an internship that most young wannabe designers would have given their right hands to have because Giles didn’t have his interns merely fetching coffee while he only saw them once on the first day and then again on the last without even bothering to knows their names, they worked side by side with the award winning designer for 8 straight weeks.

Safrina was giving up an opportunity that would most like never come again, all because her father and a woman she had looked up too made an irreversible mistake.

That hurt. More than almost anything else thus far. 

She had to take a deep breath before she trusted herself to speak. “Did you tell her none of this is her fault?”

“I did, I said it absolutely wouldn’t be awkward at all, that I don’t hold her accountable in any fashion, she started crying, which DID make it awkward and reaffirmed my divine thankfulness that I don’t have children of my own. I told her to take some time to calm down and let things settle, think on it some more and the spot was still hers for now. But Gwen, I took that opportunity away from a LOT of applicants with a far more experience so I could give to Safrina. I can’t hold it open forever.”

“I know, and I appreciate you giving her that slot more than you know. I’ll… I’ll make sure it gets fixed okay? I promise.”

Once again bowing her head she started to leave when for a second time that afternoon he called out to her to stop. That sweet soft smile people told her had no venom or cruelty whatsoever lit up his face. “How about you gimme an hour to finish things up in here and then I’ll make us some lunch?”

For some inexplicable reason she felt tears well in her eyes at the thought. She didn’t deserve this, she didn’t deserve him. But, even still, she found herself nodding and a wet smile made its way to her face.

“I’d like that,” Gwen told him before she turned on the heel on her boot and walked out; unable to look at the still empty boxes in the corner of the room and finding herself hoping they would remain unpacked.


End file.
